Do Product Recommendations Really Work For eCommerce Businesses?

Customers in this age and time love the personal touch. They’d love it if your online store is able to give them suggestions on the products they should shop for next! If you search for product recommendations, there’s one line which will pop up numerous times: “70% of Amazon’s homepage is dedicated to product recommendations.”

It is true.

But Amazon’s product recommendation system is no joke!If you are a first-time visitor on the website, you will find generic recommendations such as “What Other Customers Are Looking At Right Now” or any “Best Seller”.

If you visit it again, you will find personalized recommendations on the homepage that are based on your previous visits’ browsing history. Multiple studies by Gartner and Forrester show that such a strategy, if deployed well, can increase revenue by up to 300%, conversion rate by 150% and average order value by 50%.

A 2015 study by Barilliance indicated that up to 31% revenue of the 300 eCommerce sites surveyed was generated solely from personalized product recommendations during the last quarter of 2014, and the worldwide average of the same was 12%!

This means they want to assure themselves that when they make a purchase, they get maximum value out of their decision. For an effective product recommendation strategy, make a list of all products you want to sell and divide them into two categories – regular ones and expensive ones.

2. Buy and save

Let’s be honest – online shoppers can’t resist offers that make them save money without having to compromise on the number of products they buy! If you offer a product bundle or a set of similar products at a cheaper rate, than if bought individually, your eCommerce order value will increase.

Boots, a pharmacy chain in the UK & Ireland, is known to use this recommendation strategy not only on their website but also at their brick & mortar stores.

3. Personalizing the “shopping cart” page

So your potential customer has filled the shopping cart and is now proceeding towards the checkout process. To grab his or her attention one final time, you can add “You May Also Like” widget, showcasing both complementary and supplementary product offers.

Since the eCommerce website just gets one chance to attract the potential customer’s attention, the suggested items should be highly relevant and personalized. If done right, the e-store can achieve a conversion rate that is as high as 150%.

Read more: 5 Mistakes That Even The Top Most eCommerce Stores Make And Lose Customers

Now, it’s your turn to take a call!

Avoid overwhelming your customers or diverting them from completing the conversion process. Instead, make sure your recommendations are relevant and are actually helpful to them in making an informed decision. But how can you ensure this? With the use of Wigzo!

This interaction includes the product and service recommendations that brands have to offer to their customers.

Wigzo’s machine learning technology helps you to understand the changing needs of these customers and optimize your marketing strategies accordingly. When you know what a customer is looking for, the recommendations you make become more relevant to him.

About the author

Asavari is a content writer at Wigzo. She creates compelling content as per the documented inbound strategies and focuses on bringing out the use cases of behavioural automation and push notifications.